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Ashima Sends V13 in Colorado

Twelve-year-old Ashima Shiraishi has just climbed her fifth V13 by sending TheAutomator in Colorado's Rocky Mountain National Park. Shiraishi needed only two sessions to send the problem, which was first climbed in August of 2000 by Dave Graham. TheAutomator sits in an area know as Lower Chaos Canyon and became the first problem of the grade to be completed by a female climber when Angie Payne topped it out in 2010.

This is the second V13 send for Shiraishi this month. The young globe-trotting climber from New York City was recently spending time in Magic Wood, Switzerland, where she sent One Summer in Paradise. Since she started climbing in 2007 at the age of six, Shiraishi has become the number one female climber in the world. In a mere six years of climbing, she has sent two 5.14c's (Lucifer and Southern Smoke in the Red River Gorge), five V13's (Fragile Steps and Steady PlumsDirect in Rocklands, Crown of Aragorn in Hueco Tanks, One Summer in Paradise, and now The Automator) and flashed the V11 Black Demon in Rocklands, South Africa. She now plans to try Jade (v14), which is also located in RMNP.

Click HERE to read a Rock and Ice interview with Shiraishi from earlier this year.

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